LEADERSHIP PROCESSES AND STYLES

MODULE 5

“Be humble when you are victorious – Executive leaders don’t shout their success,
instead they remain humble and silent.”

Leaders are made and not born. Leadership skills can be thought to anyone who
is willing and given an opportunity to lead an organization. It is important have someone
to continue the goals of a company. There are some qualities a great leader should have:
Be strong when you are week – This is very important for developing a leader. You need
to give them the opportunity to grow strong and they will learn from their own experience
in leadership especially when a leader is weak, he has no choice but to become strong.

Be brave when you are scared – Risks are very essential in business. You need to
be brave to take risks. In developing a leader, it might be risky because they might fail
their tasks but learning takes time and someone needs to experience failure in order to
succeed. Be humble when you are victorious – Executive leaders don’t shout their
success, instead they remain humble and silent. The more you show your achievements,
the more people will envy you and will try to destroy you.

As a leader, you need to stay humble to your employees. The business world is
very crucial place and having too much pride and envy will not earn you anything.
Sometimes when the company has too much greediness, they will became impromptu in
investing without thinking further and this might became the cause of their downfall.
Look at the mirror and not on the window – a great leader don’t need to hear negative
feedbacks form others, they look at their self and improve.

Other people might tell you that you can’t achieve anything in life or other people
will judge you. The important is that you know yourself that you can reach you goals and
if ever they judge your capabilities, prove it to them that their wrong. You can’t explain
to everyone that why they shouldn’t judge you, instead make this as your motivation to
change other’s belief on you. A great leader is honest of what he/she is capable of. You
don’t need to pretend of what you have and promise to a person, you will just break
people’s trust on you. Trust is your most important assent – Great companies expands
and continually growing because of the people who trust them. They use this trust to get
investors and stock holders. They trust this companies that they will became successful
someday. Leaders need to gain trust from their employees. If your employee’s don’t trust
you, they will not follow your advice and your commands.

Leadership truly begins with understanding your strengths and is a continual

process of learning how to use those strengths to influence others (Griffiths, 2014). To
understand leadership the word leader has to be examined. Webster describes a leader
as a guide, a person who has commanding authority or influence. Additionally, a leader
must possess specific qualities and characteristics to be classified a great leader. I will
future delve into these qualities and characteristic as well as discuss my own personal
leadership strengths and weaknesses.

Management and Leadership are two very different systems of human behavior.
Both are essential to the success of an organization; yet, like the repulsing polarity of two
magnets, they push against one another and, if not kept in balance, can end up ejecting
one or the other causing great damage to the organization and its people. It is difficult,
yet necessary, to maintain both strong leadership and strong management
simultaneously.

People are naturally reluctant to step into change and the discomfort we
experience when we find ourselves in the midst of ambiguity. Much of what we call
“organization” is the struggle to reign in that ambiguity and bring things back to a state
of equilibrium. Management is about developing systems and processes that enable us
to take dominion over chaos. It is an attempt to create a semblance of order and
constancy in an inherently complex situation. It’s about designing plans and systems for
monitoring progress and controlling outcomes. It involves solving problems, giving
reports, having meetings, and developing policies, all for the purpose of bringing things
to a place of efficiency, where the ambiguity is dispelled and people can feel comfortable
again.
 The problem is that, in a rapidly-changing environment, equilibrium can be deadly.
The external environment today is a bit like whitewater rafting. To survive, you have to
constantly shift your weight from one side of the raft to the other, thrust your paddle first
to the left and then to the right, or use it to push off a rapidly approaching rock. This is
when you need leadership rather than management.

Leadership is about change. It’s about helping the organization define its vision,
one that can take advantage of opportunities and avoid oncoming threats. It’s about
challenging people to grow and to unleash their yet untapped potential. It’s about
inspiring people to step into uncharted territory. Leaders get nervous when things are
running too smoothly; often introducing innovative ideas just to stir things up a bit. CEO,
Renato Beninatto of Milengo, a translation and localization industry, uses the term “chief
instigator” to describe his job. Whereas managers constantly try to adjust to change,
leaders are in the business of producing change.

It’s important to understand that both are necessary for success. Unfortunately,
some organizations I have been acquainted with continue to value management over
leadership. In these situations, the leadership function can be mistakenly identified as
subversive to the organization’s welfare. The call for unity is often a demand that those
with innovative thoughts keep them to themselves. The status quo is confused with the
sacred. If organizations are to stay afloat and thrive in today’s volatile environment, they
must recognize that leadership is essential. In the Bible there is a saying about putting
new wine into old wineskins and thus causing the wineskins to burst because they lack
flexibility. The new wine must be put into new wineskins. Management tries to hold the
wine in a manageable form. Leadership is the process of changing from the old, dried-
out, leaky wineskins to the new, and more resilient, more adjustable forms.